I’d like to take this opportunity (5:30pm on a Tuesday sitting in a Starbucks…) to thank the techie gods for these five technological innovations I can’t imagine my life without:

1) The Laptop – I wouldn’t even be here, sitting in this Starbucks at 5:30pm on a Tuesday if it weren’t for the laptop. Mine is a black MacBook. It’s light, sleek, fast, and now that I’ve got a new battery, it holds a five-hour charge. As a writer I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to have to write papers, even novels, on typewriters. Writing a page and then realizing that there was a spelling error? The horror! Being stuck in a home office or computer lab in order to use a desktop computer? Never again!

2) The Cell Phone – My current cell is a black Motorola Razr (it matches my laptop, which was an accident), and even though I can call, text, and surf (the very slow) Internet, I can’t wait until my plan is up in September so I can upgrade to a new phone. There are so many phones now with speedy Internet capabilities, music players, digital cameras, even video cameras, you often only need this one tiny piece of plastic to get you through your day.

3) TiVo – Very few people I know actually own a TiVo machine, but most have a digital video recorder and we can thank TiVo for that. Now I get to start my day with The Daily Show and a cup of coffee, instead of having to end my evening that way. I can skip through the commercials for dishwashing liquid while watching Good Eats on the Food Network. And I can re-watch the season finale of Lost to try and figure out what the hell is going on with that wacky island. I never want to be tied down to a programming schedule or (gasp!) a VHS tape-recorded show, again.

4) The iPod – The iPhone has a music player and the iPod Touch has Internet capabilities, but I’ll take a regular iPod (now called an “iPod classic” That was fast!) any day. My life is richer now that I can walk to the subway station in New York listening to Of Montreal, and when I get in my car in Los Angeles, I scroll through my iPod to find the perfect song to drive to the beach to (Len’s “Steal My Sunshine” is a personal, pop favorite). I now have a soundtrack to my life and I can’t imagine my life without it.

5) Bluetooth – This is both a physical thing and a magical data transmission thing. I’m thankful for both. Physical Bluetooth devices, like the earpiece I carry in my car, are a life saver for two reasons: 1) I won’t kill myself while driving, and 2) I won’t get a $50 ticket now that California has a new non-handheld cell phone law. And I’m thankful for the magical powers of Bluetooth that can’t be seen, which help me to get photos from my laptop to my cell phone and visa versa. Now embarrassing photos of my sister are always around to share at the next family reunion.

Since it’s not a physical thing, I didn’t include Facebook on this list, but I think it deserves an honorable mention. There’s no reason to ever fall out of touch with someone now. I’ve got friends on Facebook that I haven’t seen since I was eight, friends that I see almost every day, and even an ex-boyfriend (or two) so I know when he has a new girlfriend (Ouch! They look so happy together! What a douchebag!). (Editor’s Note: And we can happily stalk people without ever being discovered!) It’s both a blessing and a curse, but one that I could never do without.

[Photo courtesy of pcworld.com]

I’m not trying to be a creepy stalker. But, I mean, really; I don’t know a single student – or person, really – on my campus or even enrolled in my school who doesn’t have their own computer. Whether it’s a chunky tank of a desktop or a sleek and sexy notebook, everyone at school has their own computer. It’s not even a luxury anymore; yes, libraries all have computers for your use, but who really solely depends on the library for computer use? No one I know.

Trouble is – and this is the trouble now-a-days with everything – computers are EXPENSIVE. Even the proverbial cost of an arm and a leg will probably only get you a second-hand Dell off of craigslist. Mind you, I’m not knocking the second-hand craigslist computer; I’m typing this up on one of them right now. But if you’re looking for a new compy that can keep up with you, you can expect to be in the hole about $700. Right?

Ladies (and that one gent), let me introduce you to a new friend of mine: computer shows.

My mom and I decided to head down to a computer show last weekend for the heck of it. She needed more RAM and I wanted to see if there was anyone who could fix my poor, mostly dead laptop. So we wandered in and found a guy in the back who was fixing laptops right there. After waiting in line for a few moments, he looked at my mom’s laptop really quick, then gave her a quick estimate on how much updating it would be (a nice $120). He also told me that it would be about $300 to replace my laptop’s broken screen, whereas HP told me that it would cost me around $900 and I might as well just get a new notebook.

I handed that man my laptop and $300 before he could say, “It’ll take me about a week.”

My cousin, who had met us there with my aunt, was all squeals when she found a $50 copy of software that sells for about $400. I bought a nifty wireless mouse for $17.

But the bargains had only just begun.

My mom was looking around for a new laptop for my aunt. We found a couple of really nice guys for a reasonable price of $435, tax included. After a bit of searching, we found the deal of a lifetime; a tablet PC for a measly $425. It was the floor model, so it had a few scratches here and a little dent there.

“I’ll give it to you for $400,” the man behind the table loaded with laptops told us when he saw our faces. He must’ve confused our amazement for skepticism. My mother and I immediately ran down to the ATM, scrounged together the necessary cash, and bought it there and then. We would later find out that the model – a small, adorable little Toshiba Portege M200 – retailed at about $1000.

Convinced yet? You ought to be. I’m not trying to plug anything here; rest assured of that. But with computer hardware and software prices the way they are, I’d feel all but guilty not sharing this diamond in the rough. So if you’re looking for a new laptop, a pair of speakers, or just some cheap software, find out when and where the nearest show is and go.

Oh, and my mom? She kept the tablet laptop for herself and gave my aunt her recently updated laptop. I can’t really blame her.

[Picture credit goes to: gettyimages.com (again)]